Abide in Christ, receive the Dispensing of Life, and Live as Part of the Tree of Life

As believers in Christ, those who have been grafted into Christ as the tree of life, we not only eat and drink Christ to partake of Him as our life and life supply, but we also abide in Him and become part of the tree of life, as branches in the vine. Wow, Hallelujah!

How rich and meaningful is the matter of us being grafted in Christ as the tree of life!

This is the most intrinsic and intimate illustration of the relationship God wants to have with man.

God wants not only that man would fellowship with Him and listen to Him; God wants to be one with man. How can God be one with man?

It is not merely by man obeying God, doing the work of God, and trusting in God. The oneness that God wants to have with man is an intrinsic oneness, an organic oneness.

He wants to be one with man by grafting man into Himself. Wow! God in Christ is like a great vine tree, even a universal vine that spreads throughout the universe.

As such a growing, spreading vine, He has reached us, and through our faith in Christ, we are grafted into Him.

Through believing into the Lord, we are cut from the old source and put into a new one, into Christ as the tree of life.

This is something amazing! And this doesn’t mean that we exchange our inferior, poor, and sinful life for His superior, rich, and divine life. No, there’s no “exchange of lives”; rather, God comes in to be our life and live in us, and we still live, but we live in the organic union with Him.

He wants to bring forth the new creation out of the old creation. God created man in His image and according to His likeness, and He desires to be one with man.

He does this by first becoming a man, and then going through the process of human living, crucifixion, and resurrection to become a life-giving Spirit.

In incarnation, Christ brought God into man, mingled God with man, and made God one with man.

In resurrection, Christ brought man into God, mingled man with God, and made man one with God. Now as the life-giving Spirit He comes into all those who believe into Him to dispense this God-man life and live this God-man living in them.

He does not discard our old creation; we may not like our disposition and natural characteristics, but the Lord will never discard them or eliminate them.

Rather, what He does is that He uplifts them, resurrects them, and transforms them for Him to be expressed through our disposition and characteristics. This is truly amazing.

What a process of transformation we’re in today, and what a glorious future we have as we abide in the Lord!

All we have to do is just open to Him. He does the rest; we just say Amen to His inner operating.

We are Grafted into Christ to be United to Him Organically and be Part of the Tree of Life

In John 15:1 the Lord Jesus said that He is the true vine, and in John 14:6 He said that He is life; He is the vine and life – He is a tree and He is life, He is the tree of life.

The tree of life is Christ as the embodiment of God to be life to us. He came so that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

God, who is our life, is embodied in Christ, and He is revealed in Gen. 2:9 as the tree of life.

When we speak of God as our life we don’t speak of something up in the air, something intangible and abstract; life has an embodiment and a totality, which is Christ Himself.

He came to be God incarnated, and He told us that He is the vine, He is life, and in Him was life.

In Himself, God cannot be approached or touched or enjoyed, but in His embodiment, in Christ, He is enjoyable and touchable, and we are grafted into Him by faith in Him.

Through faith in Christ, we are grafted into Christ to be united with Him organically.

The life of God has a form of a tree, and this tree is not a pine tree shooting up to heaven and hard to reach or enjoy, but a vine spreading, growing, and bringing forth fruit that can reach man.

Since Christ is a vine, everyone can partake of this fruit; the vine grows close to the earth and is reachable.

This is why in the New Jerusalem the tree of life grows on both sides of the river of life, for the tree of life is a vine tree, Christ as our life and life supply.

The tree of life is the life-pulse of the New Jerusalem, and we are branches in Christ.

We need to realize that our relationship with the Lord is not only one of worshipping Him, fearing Him, and trusting in Him; it is also that we abide in Him.

On one hand, the Lord is our food, our drink, and our living air for us to eat, drink, and breathe.

On the other hand, He is the vine and we abide in Him as the vine.

In the Gospel of John we see that we can believe into the Lord, that is, we can receive Him and have eternal life (John 1:12-13; 3:16).

We can drink the Lord Jesus as the real water, even the living water (John 4:14; 7:37), and when we drink Him, we will never thirst again.

Furthermore, the Lord Jesus said He’s the bread of life, the living bread, and the bread of God, even the bread that came out of heaven for us to eat and be satisfied (John 6).

If we receive the Lord by believing into Him, drinking Him as the living water, and eating Him as the bread of life, we spontaneously abide in Him (John 15:4).

All these result in an abiding.

By believing into Christ, we are grafted into Christ as the tree of life, and by contacting the Lord, again and again, to eat, drink, and breathe Him in, we abide in the Lord and become part of the tree of life.

Wow, hallelujah, we not only eat and drink the Lord, taking Him as our life and life supply, but we also abide in Him to become part of the tree of life!

As branches in Christ as the vine, we take in the life supply that is continually dispensed into us; we eat the Lord, drink Him, and breathe Him in.

And we just abide; we abide in Him, not doing any outward work for Him or having any other interest except abiding in Him.

As we abide in the Lord, drink Him and eat Him, we are part of the tree of life bearing fruit for the increase of the Triune God and for His glorious expression. Hallelujah!

Without us as branches, the Lord as the vine cannot do anything, for the vine is expressed through the branches and depends on the branches.

Without Him as the vine, we as the branches cannot do anything, for the branches depend on the rich life supply of the vine tree.

May we simply abide in the Lord, enjoy the riches of His life, absorb all that He is dispensing and flowing into us, and may we be part of the tree of life, the reaching out of the Triune God to man to impart and dispense life into others.

May there be no insulation or separation between us and the Lord; may we simply abide in Him, enjoy Him, and drink and eat by absorbing Him, so that we may be part of the tree of life in our experience day by day. Hallelujah, just abide in the Lord!

Lord Jesus, we believe into You and we receive You as our life and our everything. You are life and You came that we may have life; we open to receive You as our life. We come to You to drink of You as the living water. Only You can quench our thirst: give us to drink of this water of life! We take You in as the bread of life, the living bread, and the bread of God; satisfy our hunger by Yourself as the bread of life. Amen, Lord, keep us receiving You, drinking You, and eating You. We just want to abide in You, for we are branches in the vine, and absorb all Your riches. We exercise our spirit to abide in You and absorb all the riches of the Triune God. Amen, Lord, thank You for grafting us into Yourself to make us part of the tree of life! Praise the Lord, all we need to do is abide!

Abide in Christ, Receive the Dispensing of Life, and Live as Part of the Tree of Life

It is amazing to realize that we believers in Christ are part of the tree of life! Wow.

We not only eat Christ as the tree of life but we are united to Him (1 Cor. 6:17) and we are part of the tree of life. Hallelujah!

The tree of life is for the dispensing of the divine life into us; as we partake of the tree of life, we become the reproduction of this tree, for the tree of life grows in us and makes us part of the tree of life.

As we, the branches of Christ, abide in Him as the vine, we receive the dispensing of life from the tree of life and live as part of the tree of life (John 15:5; Rom. 8:2, 10, 6, 11; Phil. 4:13).

We just need to abide in Christ and receive the dispensing of life, and we will live as part of the tree of life.

As we abide in the Lord, He operates in us, He flows in us, and God works in us both the willing and the working.

We may read about the fact that we need to reckon ourselves as crucified with Christ and dead to sin, and we may make up our mind to do this.

But the more we try this, the more we realize we can’t, for we cannot crucify ourselves.

The Lord’s death, the reality of His crucifixion, is in the Spirit, and this Spirit is joined to our spirit.

We simply need to abide in Christ and receive the dispensing of life, and we will live as part of the tree of life.

On one hand, the tree of life was planted in our spirit through regeneration, for the divine seed was planted in our heart through faith in Christ.

On the other hand, we have been grafted into Christ to be branches of the tree of life, and we are part of the tree of life.

There is a lot of dispensing going on in a tree, a lot of flowing of the life sap for all the parts of the tree to be supplied and nourished.

There is a lot of dispensing going on in the tree of life, and as long as we abide in the Lord and are open to receive the divine dispensing, we will be supplied, we will grow, and there will be some expression of Christ.

The tree of life is not merely a concept we see in the Bible both at the beginning and at the end; the tree of life is a type of Christ as the embodiment of God spreading, growing, and reaching out to man to graft man into Himself so that, through man, this tree would spread and grow more.

Christ as the tree of life is for the divine economy to dispense Himself into us; when we open and receive the divine dispensing, we become branches in the vine and part of the tree of life. as the branches in the vine, we abide in Him and He abides in us.

Every day we need to wake up and contact the Lord, deal with anything that His light exposes and shines on, and abide in Him. Amen, just abide in Christ!

By abiding in the Lord, we believe into Him, we receive Him, we drink Him, and we eat Him in our intimate contact with Him, and we live as part of the tree of life.

On His side, He went through incarnation, death, and resurrection to become a life-giving Spirit.

On our side, we open and just receive life. Through faith, we’re grafted into Christ, the universal tree, and we are made branches of this tree.

Through our abiding in the Lord and enjoying Him, the church will come into existence as the real expression of the Triune God.

The church is the Body of Christ, the organism of the Triune God united, mingled, and incorporated with man.

This is how we become members of the Body and part of the church: by abiding in the Lord and enjoying Him.

It is very important, therefore, that we know the tree of life and experience the tree of life in a living way.

It is crucial in our Christian life to abide in the Lord so that He abides in us, so that we become living members of the church as the Body of Christ.

Thank You, dear Lord, for coming as the embodiment of God to be life to us, even the tree of life for our enjoyment of God as our life and life supply. Thank You for grafting us into Yourself as the vine; You are the vine and we are the branches. Hallelujah, we are united with the Lord organically to be part of the tree of life. Amen, Lord, we just want to abide in You as the tree of life. We choose to abide in You so that You may abide in us. We abide in You and receive Your dispensing of life so that we may live as part of the tree of life. Amen, Lord, live in us today. Keep us abiding in You and please do abide in us.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother James Lee in the message, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1965, vol. 2, “The Tree of Life,”, ch. 7, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking the Way of Enjoying Christ as the Tree of Life (2022 Memorial Day Weekend Conference), week 4, entitled, Grafted into Christ to Become Part of the Tree of Life.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – O how deep and how far-reaching / Is Thy love, dear Lord, to me! / Far beyond my pow’r to fathom, / Deeper than the deepest sea! / It has caused Thee death to suffer / And to me Thyself impart, / That in Thee I might be grafted / And become of Thee a part. (Hymns #152)
  – Now in the life-flow we’re living, / O how the light in us shines! / Both God and man are at home now / By the mutual abiding in the vine. (Hymns #1162)
  – Yet Thou art the Vine, Thou saidst it. / And I am a branch in Thee; / When I take Thee as my Savior. / Then this fact is wrought in me. / Now I’m in Thee and I need not / Seek into Thyself to come, / For I’m joined to Thee already, / With Thy flesh and bones I’m one. (Hymns #561)